


Wanda is there.

by novoaa1



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: :(, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark Feels, and idk, because i'm sad, but nat and wanda are together, i wrote this right after bc ahh, it's sad, it's still real sad, might add more parts, will probably come back and edit later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 11:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: This contains spoilers for Endgame, so don't read if you haven't seen it yet...This is just a fix-it sort of thing I wrote right after seeing Endgame.





	Wanda is there.

**Author's Note:**

> would love to know ur thoughts!

They’re at the ledge, she and Clint. 

 

It’s poetic, almost—the two of them, side by side at the end of days. 

 

Or, not the end, she supposes. 

 

Not if they can help it. 

 

Not if she and Clint can get the Soul Stone, not if Tony’s insane time-traveling contraption gets them back safely to Avengers’ Tower afterwards—not if everyone does their job. 

 

So they’re there, on Vormir; it’s dark and it’s gloomy and it almost feels as if the air itself is laced with snuffed-out lives, with the end of millions, with _death_. 

 

Red Skull is there, too, in a billowing black cloak that nearly has her rolling her eyes at the utter pretentiousness of it all, even as she knows it’s absurd—because this right here? This is serious. 

 

This is high stakes, higher than anything she and Clint have ever seen—which, considering their respective histories, is saying something. 

 

She almost expects Red Skull to tell them that one of them has to die—after all, she thinks a life for the Stone would probably fit in exactly with the fucked-up kind of sense this war with Thanos has brought on. 

 

And she’s ready. She’s ready for it to be her. She’s ready to die, because heaven knows it’s been coming for a very long time. 

 

She’d like to believe that she’s become better, that she’s become reformed in some way: that maybe being an Avenger has redeemed her. 

 

But she knows better than that. She always has. 

 

Clint’s past is bloody, she knows, but hers is worse. 

 

And even with the shitstorm he’s been wreaking over the past five years, even with the countless lives he’s taken in his rage-driven quest for vengeance, his ledger isn’t flooding with crimson. Not like hers. 

 

No, that’s why Clint had Laura, had Lila, had Cooper and Nathaniel—even after everything, he’d always deserved that happy ending. 

 

He’d always deserved family. 

 

She hadn’t, and she never would—no one would mourn her once she was gone. 

 

(Except the Avengers. And Phil. And Maria, and maybe Nick.)

 

So when the time came standing atop that towering ledge, she was ready for Red Skull to say those words, to say that her time was finally up, to say that maybe she had a chance to finally even the scales of bleeding red she’d been bathed in since birth—that maybe her life (or her death, really) could actually _mean_ something. 

 

He didn't. 

 

(She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.)

 

Instead, he’d said they’d have to relive their most defining memory—the moment that had formed their very souls from the battered ruins of nothingness—in order to retrieve the Stone. 

 

It might just have been the most painful thing she’d ever done; it felt like her heart was being ripped from her very chest as she entered into the bloodstained remnant of reality past, of the moment she’d truly become the monster she sees every day reflected back at her in the mirror. 

 

(She thinks she might have almost preferred to just launch herself off the cliff and be done with it.)

 

But sooner than she could blink, they were waking up side by side in a freezing pitch-black river, the glowing amber Soul Stone clutched tightly in her grip—and Red Skull, the towering ledge… gone. All of it, gone. 

 

She doesn’t know what to do with the hope that blooms in her chest, then—the unfamiliar warmth in her bones that’s telling her that maybe things aren’t so hopeless anymore, that maybe they finally have the chance now to bring everyone back… to bring _Wanda_ back. 

 

Hope is a dangerous thing, she knows. She’s fought it for as long as she can remember, and for a while there, she almost thought she’d done away with it entirely. 

 

She supposes it’d be rather foolish to believe such a thing, especially now, because the day she met Wanda she knew that she’d never be so unfailingly cynical ever again. 

 

The day they’d first kissed, and she’d felt the warmth of Wanda’s full pink lips upon hers, she let that hope begin to settle deep in her chest, and she knew without a doubt that it’d never leave her again, not when Wanda was there and smiling like _that_ and pressing her lips against Natasha’s with such certainty she feared she might burst. 

 

It was as if a part of her was literally ripped away when she felt Wanda die.

 

And now? Now she’s hoping. Again, even though it aches her terribly to think of how far she’ll fall if they lose. 

 

Now, she’s hoping for those wisps of scarlet energy, for that angelic smile that never fails to make everything seem right with the world, for the powerful young witch who wormed her way into Natasha’s heart (whatever’s left of it) and refuses to leave. 

 

Now, she’s hoping for _Wanda_ , alive and smiling, despite everything within her screaming that she shouldn’t bother. 

 

She doesn’t care, though. 

 

Wanda’s worth hoping for. 

 

∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅

 

Wanda comes back. 

 

She comes _back_. 

 

She fights Thanos with a sort of rage that’s almost terrifying, and Natasha’s sure for a moment she might kill him, but she doesn’t, and yet Natasha finds she doesn’t really care about any of it.

 

The only thing she cares about is that Wanda is _alive_.

 

And then Tony is facing off against Thanos, and the Stones are suddenly on his gauntlet, and he’s snapping his fingers to make everything right in the world even as they all watch the light literally leaving his eyes, Thanos and his army turning to dust around them.

 

And suddenly she’s crying, _sobbing_ for the man she knew, for a loss she knows she won’t ever recover from—and Wanda is there. 

 

She cries even harder at that because she knows it’s not fair, knows it’s a load of bullshit that Wanda has her wrapped in her arms, that Natasha can smell her cinnamon-y scent, that she’s nuzzling even further into the delicate slope of the young witch’s collarbone even as Pepper is watching the man she loves draw his final breath.

 

It’s not fair, she knows, but there’s a warmth peaking in her chest even amidst the feeling of devastating loss, and she knows without a doubt that that warmth has a name, that its name is Wanda, and that Wanda’s the only goddamn reason she can breathe right now because Tony is dead and they’ve won but Tony is _dead_ and he’s not ever coming back and it feels like her heart might just burst beneath her ribcage at the sheer _unfairness_ of it all. 

 

And still, Wanda is there. 

 

Wanda is there. 

 

∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅ ∅

**Author's Note:**

> again, feedback would be awesome!
> 
> (my [tumblr](https://psyches.co.vu/))


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